Ryan Calo is an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a former research director at CIS. A nationally recognized expert in law and emerging technology, Ryan's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired Magazine, and other news outlets. Ryan serves on several advisory committees, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Future of Privacy Forum. He co-chairs the American Bar Association Committee on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence and serves on the program committee of National Robotics Week.

We invite submissions for We Robot 2016 to be held in Coral Gables, Florida on April 1-2, 2016 at the University of Miami School of Law. We Robot–the premier US conference on law and policy relating to Robotics that began at the University of Miami School of Law in 2012, and has since been held at Stanford and University of Washington–returns to Miami Law April 1st-2nd in 2016. Attendees include lawyers, engineers, philosophers, robot builders, ethicists, and regulators who are on the front lines of robot theory, design, or development. The main conference will be preceded by a day of special workshops (see below). The conference web site is http://robots.law.miami.edu/2016.

The program commitee invites submissions for the fourth annual robotics law and policy conference—We Robot 2015—to be held in Seattle, Washington on April 10-11, 2015 at the University of Washington School of Law. We Robot has been hosted twice at the University of Miami School of Law and once at Stanford Law School.

In a recent op-ed, author Evgeny Morozov claims that we tend to think of privacy in terms of control over personal information rather than power or influence. “The privacy debate, incapacitated by misplaced pragmatism, defines privacy as individual control over information flows,” writes Morozov. Instead we should be thinking of how and why powerful institutions use data to nudge us toward their own economic and political ends.

Cyberlaw is the study of the intersection between law and the Internet. It should come as no surprise, then, that the defining questions of cyberlaw grew out of the Internet's unique characteristics. For instance: an insensitivity to distance led some courts to rethink the nature of jurisdiction. A tendency, perhaps hardwired, among individuals and institutions to think of "cyberspace" as an actual place generated a box of puzzles around the nature of property, privacy, and speech.

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The term “hacking” has come to signify breaking into a computer system. A number of local, national, and international laws seek to hold hackers accountable for breaking into computer systems to steal information or disrupt their operation. Other laws and standards incentivize private firms to use best practices in securing computers against attack.

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"At the outset, the goal of this research was to use sports as a way to answer questions about law enforcement. The criminal justice system is much more complicated than an athletic institution, the problems are weightier, and the consequences more dire. But even though it’s not a not a perfect parallel, Ryan Calo, who studies law and technology at the University of Washington, says that the research helps explain how people respond when machines lay down the law.

"Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, says that we tend to talk about robots as if they are a future technology, ignoring the fact that we have already been living with them for several decades. “If you want to envisage the future in the 1920s, 1940s, 1980s, or in 2017, then you think of robots. But the reality is that robots have been in our societies since the 1950s,” he says."

"It’s less clear how such measures might help government officials and regulators grappling with the effects of smarter software in areas like privacy. “I’m not sure how useful it’ll be,” says Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who recently proposed a detailed roadmap of AI policy issues. He argues that decisionmakers need a high-level grasp of the underlying technology, and a strong sense of values, more than granular measures of progress."

"Last Saturday tech billionaire and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk tweeted a warning that there is “vastly more risk” associated with artificial intelligence than with North Korea along with an image bearing the words “In the end the machines will win”.

"“There is no possible way to have some omnibus AI law,” says Ryan Calo, a professor of law and co-director of the Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington. “But rather we want to look at the ways in which human experience is being reshaped and start to ask what law and policy assumptions are broken.”"

U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a hearing on Wednesday, November 16, 2016, at 3:00 p.m. entitled “Exploring Augmented Reality.” The hearing will examine the emergence, benefits, and implications of augmented reality technologies. Unlike virtual reality that creates a wholly simulated reality, augmented reality attempts to superimpose images and visual data on the physical world in an intuitive way.

The University of Washington School of Law is delighted to announce a public workshop on the law and policy of artificial intelligence, co-hosted by the White House and UW’s Tech Policy Lab. The event places leading artificial intelligence experts from academia and industry in conversation with government officials interested in developing a wise and effective policy framework for this increasingly important technology. The event is free and open to the public but requires registration. -

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Facebook is still reeling from the revelation that a British firm, Cambridge Analytica, improperly used millions of its users’ data. #DeleteFacebook is trending and those in the tech world are closely watching how users react to the news.

Can the tech giant turn a new leaf? What data are we willing to give up for the convenience of platforms? And would paying for services like Facebook solve the problem?

Nobody likes to wait in line. So today, Amazon removed that unpleasantness from the neighborhood grocery store. At Amazon Go, you walk in, pick up your groceries and walk out.

There are no checkout lines or scanners and almost no employees, just sensors and cameras. But what is that convenience going to cost you? We talk with Geekwire’s Todd Bishop and University of Washington law professor and privacy expert Ryan Calo.

The University of Washington School of Law is delighted to announce a public workshop on the law and policy of artificial intelligence, co-hosted by the White House and UW’s Tech Policy Lab. The event places leading artificial intelligence experts from academia and industry in conversation with government officials interested in developing a wise and effective policy framework for this increasingly important technology.

Simon Jack reports from Seattle on robots at work. From the Boeing factory where robots make planes to a clothes shop where a robot helps him buy a new pair of jeans. Plus Ryan Calo, professor of law at the University of Washington, grapples with the question of who to blame when robots go wrong, and whether there is such a thing as robot rights.